Tell a Story
Posted on: March 17, 20108 Comments |
Often times when I go out to shoot there’s no set agenda on what I want to capture. I’ll head downtown and begin walking around looking for things that seem attention worthy. For example, there are several homeless people that congregate in a park. I’ll often snap a pic and keep on walking.
But lately, I’ve been being more mindful of creating a series of photos versus just one image. There’s got to be a story there, so why not tell it? I think we get so excited to get an image we consider worthy, that we often forget to keep snapping away. It’s as if we wear blinders keeping us from seeing the big story. We focus on one minute part and once we obtain it we pack the camera and walk away.
But what if we become more patient? What if instead of just capturing one page of the story we capture an entire chapter? Perhaps even a book? A photo essay if you will?
David duChemin addresses this in his book Within the Frame, writing that capturing a story is much easier when you can tell it in a longer fashion. As he states, there’s a visual language at work that gives the viewer the means of interpreting the story. I won’t go into great detail here as to what a photo essay should consist of, but duChemin has written a great article that can be located here.
So the next time you’re out shooting I challenge you to slow down, look, realize. There’s a story out there waiting to be told. With enough patience, you might just be able to find it.
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March 17th, 2010 at 9:24 am
I love this idea! Thanks for the inspiration. I will try to do this more often instead of just trying to get THE one shot. And this series of photographs definitely tell a “story”. One photo alone in this set, however, would be awesome as a stand-alone just because they rock!
March 17th, 2010 at 10:07 am
i really was just thinking of this, from your shots of slim and drummy’s clone series. i guess, a theme or series in general, of something very particular and not so general, can really be captivating if done right
March 17th, 2010 at 10:08 am
I totally agree. There is a story in each photo and you can tell that story sometimes better when you have more than one image to post.
March 17th, 2010 at 10:09 am
umm, i sound like an idiot, scratch out “in general” after i typed “a theme or series…”
March 17th, 2010 at 10:58 am
I’m really interested in trying to tell a longer story in just a few photos — maybe taken over the course of several weeks or months. a very different sort of “time lapse” photography. It’s a project that’s been in my head for a while, along with the desire to really tackle a classic photo essay.
Here’s a real short story: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dakotamorrison/4074346054/
March 17th, 2010 at 12:02 pm
I was thinking of something like that
for a while. Yesterday I was trying to do a story of
my sunny day out with the camera all by myself, but get destructed faster then I could say destructed.
Thank you for the links
and
Happy st.P`s
March 17th, 2010 at 7:45 pm
Great reflection. I take photos for my local newspaper (I’m editor, writer, photographer and janitor all in one!) and I love it when I get 4 or 5 shots that really convey the event I’m at. It makes writing the story much easier. A picture is most certainly worth a thousand words.
March 17th, 2010 at 8:45 pm
@Nicole: Yeah, I like that idea…time lapse story thingy. I have found after looking through my hundreds of sets that a lot of them have been taken in the same place at different times but they do tell a sort of story of that place…why do I keep going back there? it’s interesting.
when i do my daily walk-abouts during my lunch break or on the weekends, i usually end up unintentionally telling a story about the place.
finally, this article was the very thing i needed to pull out of my creative funk/slump. i have been bemoaning that there’s nothing “new” to shoot, when really, there is plenty…i just need to slow down and look harder. things are changing in my neighborhood (buildings being leveled, new homes being built, the fancy homes and rich people have been selling their belongings every weekend and this is totally new…there are stories there…i need to go find them and shoot them
thanks for this!